As he stepped out of the seminar room, a smile suddenly appeared on Li Dong’s face.
’Even if we go by last name, I’m still listed before you, haha.’
Although the author order didn’t reflect the level of contribution when alphabetized by last name, the visual effect of "I’m first" was satisfying in itself.
Li Dong’s smile froze mid-laugh.
’Wait a minute.’
’What about Old Yang?’
"...No."
"Old Yang, why is your last name Yang?"
In the end, Li Dong could only console himself.
"I’ll have to find a chance to get Old Yang to change his last name later..."
He sighed, pushed open the glass door to the stairwell, and walked quickly toward his dorm.
「...」
When Li Dong returned to dorm room 404, he was surprised to see Wang Hao there.
Wang Hao was listlessly curled up in his blankets. Hearing the door open, he glanced down from his bunk.
"Brother Dong."
Li Dong paused for a moment.
"Haozi? Didn’t you say your teammate found you guys a coach from Shuimu to help guide you?"
"Why are you back so soon?"
After all, when Wang Hao had left yesterday morning, he was in high spirits, saying he was going to Shuimu for three days to work with his teammates and coach.
But now, just a day later, he was back, looking completely dejected.
Wang Hao sighed.
"The team disbanded."
Li Dong frowned.
’That’s a bit strange.’
The National Mathematical Contest in Modeling was a competition where teams of three needed an incredible amount of cooperation and chemistry.
Over three days, they had to complete the entire process of modeling a real-world problem, solving it, and writing a paper. No part of the chain could afford to break.
So, generally speaking, people who agreed to team up were usually on the same wavelength.
A situation where the team fell apart and disbanded just a few days into training was actually quite rare.
Li Dong sat down in the chair opposite Wang Hao.
"What happened?"
Wang Hao looked as if he’d just swallowed a fly.
"You know that coach we found from Shuimu?"
"One of our teammates found him—the senior I told you about, the one who won a silver medal at the ACM regionals."
Li Dong nodded. He remembered Wang Hao talking about his teammates before.
One was a sophomore senior from Yan University, a strong programmer who had won a silver medal at the ACM regionals.
The other was a guy from the computer science department who got an M Prize in the American competition last year and was a great paper writer.
Wang Hao continued.
"We used last year’s National Contest Problem A as a warm-up. The coach from Shuimu explained how they’d broken down the problem back in their day, and it felt pretty productive."
"But yesterday afternoon, I don’t know what got into the senior..."
"He suddenly proposed to me and the coach that we should kick out our teammate who won the M Prize."
Li Dong was taken aback.
The M Prize (Meritorious Winner) was an award tier in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling in the United States.
This M Prize tier was awarded to roughly 9% to 13% of all participating teams.
A student who could win an M Prize was proficient in fundamentals, modeling approach, and paper writing. In the context of the national competition, while maybe not complete overkill, they were a bona fide, solid competitor.
Especially when it came to paper writing, a student with an M Prize from the American competition was already leagues ahead of most of their peers who hadn’t participated in international contests.
That kind of person was invaluable to a national competition team.
Li Dong frowned.
"And he wanted to replace him?"
"So, the person this senior wanted to bring in must be really amazing?"
Wang Hao sighed.
"If she were, I wouldn’t have said anything. Let the best person compete, right?"
"I’d even be willing to step down, I wouldn’t have a problem with it."
"The problem is..."
"The person he wanted to bring in was a girl."
Li Dong: ...
As Wang Hao said this, his expression turned strange.
"This girl isn’t even in this field!"
"She’s a journalism and communication major."
"The senior said she could handle the paper writing part..."
"We gave her a test run last night."
"We gave her the original text of last year’s National Contest Problem C and asked her to write a thousand-word problem restatement based on her understanding."
"And guess what happened?"
Wang Hao gave a bitter smile.
"She even managed to misspell the word ’Jacobian’."
"And she misspelled it four times in a row."
"In the problem restatement, she wrote ’linear programming under nonlinear constraints’ instead of just ’nonlinear constraints’," Wang Hao said mournfully.
"She also asked us what the difference was between nonlinear constraints and nonlinear programming."
After hearing this, Li Dong was silent for a good while.
’That level of skill...’
’Honestly, forget the national modeling contest, she’d probably struggle even in something like the Freshman Cup, a small competition for first-year newbies.’
"So what happened in the end?" Li Dong asked.
Wang Hao sighed.
"In the end, the girl wasn’t actually brought onto the team."
"The coach realized something was wrong and helped us put a stop to it."
"But..."
He looked up, his expression complicated.
"My teammate, the one with the M Prize, was already upset."
"This morning, he just packed his things and left, saying he wasn’t going to be on the team anymore."
Li Dong pretty much understood.
’Why would the senior insist on replacing the M Prize teammate and pulling in a clearly unsuitable girl... It was all about a man’s ego, wasn’t it?’
’He wanted to show off his authority and ability as the "captain" in front of a pretty girl, had a momentary lapse in judgment, and made the offer.’
’Once the offer was made, he couldn’t take it back, so he just had to stubbornly push it through.’
’As for his teammates’ feelings? Completely ignored.’
Li Dong shook his head inwardly.
’Even if the team hadn’t disbanded, a person like that would be a disaster on the actual battlefield of the national competition.’
’A competition isn’t child’s play. For three days, seventy-two hours, you have to be crammed in a room with your teammates, eating, sleeping, fighting for the bathroom, and pulling all-nighters to revise the paper.’
’In that kind of environment, any hint of "unreliability" gets magnified infinitely.’
After sighing, Wang Hao saw Li Dong frowning and thought he was worried about him, so he quickly waved his hand.
"Brother Dong, it’s fine. Worst case, I’ll just find another team."
In reality, Li Dong wasn’t worried about Wang Hao at all.
With Wang Hao’s Saiyan-like nature, forged by fighting his way up through the competition circuit, a small setback like this was nothing to him.
He was just mulling over something else...
’Why did that guy want to replace the M Prize teammate, but not Wang Hao?’
’Considering Wang Hao was only a freshman, no matter how much of a genius he was, he was technically the team’s weak link...’
’Logically, a smarter captain, even if he was going to be foolish for a pretty face, should have replaced the team member in the most replaceable position.’
’But this senior specifically targeted the M Prize teammate, and never once mentioned replacing Wang Hao...’
’The Logic here is a bit strange.’
What Li Dong didn’t know was that the senior had originally wanted to get rid of Wang Hao, but...
the news that Academician Zhang Wenping had invited him to serve as an expert reviewer for the national modeling competition’s innovative achievement award had already begun to quietly circulate within their circles.
The senior with the ACM silver medal had naturally heard about it.
He knew that Wang Hao was Li Dong’s roommate.
That’s why he didn’t target Wang Hao.
Li Dong thought about it for a while but couldn’t figure it out, so he temporarily put the matter aside.
Wang Hao was still talking.
"No, finding a team is still a bit unreliable."
"If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I’ll form my own team."
As he said this, his gaze fell on Li Dong.
Li Dong quickly waved his hands in refusal.
"Hey!"
"No, no, no!"
"Don’t count me in!"
"I don’t have time to play around with you guys."
Wang Hao: ...
Although he had long expected this answer, hearing it firsthand was still a little disheartening.
Seeing his disappointed look, Li Dong was about to say something, but then someone suddenly came to mind.
’The last time I helped put out a fire for Qi Yu’s research group...’
’The School of Mathematics had lent them a temporary assistant. At a critical step, I gave him a little hint about the relationship between relaxation time and turnover time, and the guy immediately understood. He then used a clever operator iteration to salvage the model that had been stuck for two weeks.’
’From that one interaction, I could tell he was very perceptive and had a steady mentality. Even when being given pointers by a freshman, his expression didn’t show the slightest hint of unease.’
’He’s promising material for academia.’
’More importantly, Liu Ruochuan had personally introduced him to Qi Yu’s group. Anyone recommended by Liu Ruochuan had to have a solid foundation.’
Thinking of this, Li Dong smiled again.
"But..."
"I can introduce you to someone."

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